In most theaters, sports and other entertainment environments, the customers and patrons of the event purchase tickets either from a box office or in advance and thereafter proceed to an entrance door at which point the tickets are presented to gain admission. Often customers and patrons are given instructional or promotional materials at such ticket presentation together with a ticket stub or stamp ticket portion. Thereafter the customers or patrons of the event are admitted to the facility and the ticket stub or stamped ticket is retained to identify a paid customer or patron should such identification be necessary subsequent to admission. In addition, certain entertainment theaters and sports environments utilized assigned seating in which case the retained ticket stub or stamped ticket serves to identify the assigned seat for the customer or patron.
A similar process occurs in other environments such as those utilized in transportation activities such as airports, railroad stations and bus terminals. Thus there are a wide variety of events and activities which employ some sort of admission ticket utilized in gaining access to the facility and at which various promotional or informational material are provided to the customer or patron upon entrance to the facility.
The admission tickets utilized in such varied facilities are subject to a corresponding variation of form size and structure. However, most admission tickets generally comprise relatively small pieces of paper or cardboard baring the necessary information and event identification to confirm ticket purchase and the customer or patrons right to admission. As mentioned above, many facilities in which an admission ticket is utilized to gain access also participate in the common practice of distributing various informational, advertising or promotional materials to the customer or patron. Typically such materials take the form of loose paper sheets which are often variously colored or embossed with various interesting images to provide an attractive and interesting item which encourages the customer or patron to absorb the desired information or promotional advertising messages. While the distribution of such promotional material is opportune for the event organizers, operators of the environments and facilities within in which such events are carried forward often find the distribution of such advertising, promotional and informative materials to be a nuisance or undesired expense due to the tendency of customers or patrons to carelessly discard such materials. In addition, the customer or patron often completely ignores the promotional material and discards unread and unexamined at the first opportunity.
Thus while there exists a need and/or desire on the part of facility operators to communicate promotional, advertising or information material to patrons of the facility, the resulting problems of ineffective communication and additional costs of cleaning up discarded material tends to discourage the distribution of such materials. As a result, important opportunities to communicate advertising, promotional or informational material to consumers is not effectively exploited.
There remains therefore a continuing need in the art for a low cost and effective means for communicating promotional, advertising and informational materials to attendees and customers at ticketed events such as theaters, sports, other entertainment and transportation activities such as airports, bus terminals or railroad stations.